taking the stars from my eyes
by Gray Doll
Summary: "I like you. Your brand of crazy is exciting."


**taking the stars from my eyes**

"You're crazy," he tells her, flicking the ash from his cigarette. She blinks her big eyes at him, lips slowly curling into a smirk. It makes his muscles tense because it looks like she knows something that he doesn't, and that is simply absurd. Because she doesn't. He knows, he simply always knows. That's how it is.

What he doesn't know is why he's standing beside her outside of a dingy bar on his single day off for this month, sharing a bottle of cheap wine.

"And _you're_ an annoying, sneaky, arrogant prat," she says airily, turning her eyes away from him, "but you don't hear me saying anything." She snatches the bottle of wine from his hands, tossing it into the trash before walking down the bar steps. He watches her go, blue sundress flying about her legs with the cool breeze.

She pauses at the bottom of the steps, turns to look at him over her shoulder, "Everyone's a little crazy, Patrick. Even you." Her eyes shine with something like amusement, something like recognition, but even with the loud beating of his heart in his ears he can't block out her next words, "you're just better at hiding it."

He shakes his head, lights another cigarette despite hating the taste of smoke and ash in his mouth, and pretends she doesn't get under his skin. That she doesn't make him rethink everything he knows. He looks back up, intent on throwing some poignant insult at her, but she's already gone.

He finishes his cigarette in relative peace, and doesn't allow himself to think any more of her. Not at all.

**-;**

"Gold is a great color. Bright, rich, intriguing." She folds her African wildlife magazine back up, reaches for his ice cream and takes a spoonful. He ignores her, stirring his tea, looking outside the trailer's stained, cracked window. He doesn't know why she's here, sitting across from him in this meager space, eating his ice cream like they're old friends.

They aren't _friends_. Co-workers maybe, and yes, you could call them that, but not friends.

"I like gold." She peers at him, and he sees from the corner of his eye that her hands are folded together on her lap, her head tilted slightly to the side.

"I don't care."

He has a show in less than an hour, and if she stays here for another minute, he's going to have a headache, surely, and he won't even be able to separate the rich clients from the poor ones-

"Liar," she says simply, going back to his ice cream. She picks the chocolate chips out, setting them into a neat row on her napkin. "You have gold hair."

He shakes his head, brings the plastic cup to his lips. The tea doesn't even smell good. "And?"

She stands, taking his ice cream with her, and crosses the two steps way to the trailer's door, flicking her own hair over her shoulder. "I like it."

**-;**

He wonders who she lost before coming here all on her own, a wisp of a girl with nothing but a dirty dress and an old pair of shoes, begging for a job. He wonders what her life used to be like. But he can't ask her. They're not friends. (And he can't, for the life of him, figure it out on his own and it should be unnerving that he can't-)

"Patrick," she greets him, voice light and effortless, plopping herself down beside him on the ground.

"Crazy," he says in response, but he isn't sure he means it any more. It's more of a habit than an insult, and he thinks that she knows that, because she picks a lighter from her pocket and lights his cigarette for him, then one of her own.

"Why do you smoke?" she asks after a while, bright eyes following the ringlets of smoke wafting over their heads into the air. "Teenage rebellion and all that? You don't even like it."

He shrugs, chances a look at her face, and her eyes are jewel bright under the starlight, fixed on his face. "Why do you?"

She gives a small laugh, "Crazy people can do whatever they like."

It's quiet after that.

**-;**

"You used to mumble under your breath about weird stuff all the time," he tells her, fingers nimble as they button up his vest for his next performance. "So how come you don't, any more?"

"Oh, boy wonder." She smiles, rose colored lips curving ever so slightly upwards. She looks sad. "I've found that it frightens people. She strings another bright gold bead onto a necklace chain. There's an array of fake diamonds and stones from the ground outside in front of her, and if anyone is going to make jewelry on the couch of a teetering trailer, it's going to be her. "People are scared by things they don't understand."

He swallows, looks away. He knows that, all too well. Perhaps more than anyone.

**-;**

"Why did you single _me_ out," he asks one day, "out of all people?"

She blinks, pulls her old coat tighter around her small frame. "Because you're who you are." She seems to think about it for a moment, eyes downcast, fingers gripping the harsh leather of her coat. "I've never been lonely with someone else before."

His silver tongue betrays him and "Oh," is his brilliant response.

That makes her look up, her pink lips curve. "And I like you. Your brand of crazy is exciting."

"I'm not crazy," he says, a little too quickly, and she laughs, loud. He likes the sound, and he doesn't think he will ever admit it. "I'm _not_."

She laughs, and laughs, until she almost leans into him, her head inches above his shoulder. "Oh, Patrick. A crazy man never admits he's crazy." She flicks his nose before she stands, straightening her coat and smoothing her long, tangled tresses. "I'll see you later," she says over her shoulder, skipping away.

And he thinks that maybe she is right, after all, and he is crazy, because the moment she's gone, he finds himself missing her odd company.

**-;**

It happens almost every day, and almost every night.

He'll say, "I'm not crazy."

"Are too."

"Am not – no, _no_, I'm _not_ doing this with you. I'm not crazy. Leave it at that."

"Whatever you say, Patrick."

"You're not even making any sense."

"Does anybody ever make any sense?"

**-;**

She smiles, slow and spreading, revealing a bright cut of teeth and he thinks she looks wild, he thinks she looks beau-

No.

"You smoke and smoke and smoke even though you hate it," she's saying, "you con people and steal their money and pretend to talk with the dead, you drink bottle after bottle of wine afterwards, and yet, you won't admit you're a little screwy-" she knocks on his temple, "-up here."

He rolls his eyes, and feels her hands threading into his hair, soft fingers smoothing through curls. "It's because I'm not," he says, looking straight ahead, and he finds that he doesn't want her to stop, not really.

She bites her lip, shifts a little closer to him. "Okay."

"Okay?" he repeats, brows furrowing, because she's supposed to argue with him, tell him he's absolutely nuts.

She smiles again. "Okay."

**-;**

It's a moonless night, and he's lying on the grass, red and green and yellow lights all around him, the screams of excited children reaching his ears. He doesn't see her coming, he doesn't hear her: he feels a shift in the air, in the weight of the ground around him, in the way the air hums above his face, and knows that she's there.

"A lot of people came today," she states, and he opens his eyes, turns his head a little to the side to see her sitting on her hands, head tilted back. "A lot of money. Even your father seemed happy."

He draws a breath, long and strained, and closes his eyes again. When she speaks again, it feels like days and days have passed. "Don't you ever want to run away? To... just get up and _leave_. Never look back."

His fingers dig into the ground, and he can feel the dirt bite under his nails. The night is too cold, too bright with neon colors, and his head hurts. He says, almost whispers, "Yes."

"See?" She laughs, and he feels her fingers thread with his own stained ones. "You _are_ crazy."

He doesn't say anything – they stay like that until dawn.

**-;**

"Maybe I _am_ crazy," he says to her, and the sun is high in the sky, a bright gold cut into blue, and it burns him down. He finds that he's getting tired of the same old, and he thinks that if he agrees to what she's already sure of-

She turns, long hair whipping around her face, and she's grinning. "Oh?" she questions, low and humming, one eyebrow lifting in mock surprise.

"Yeah." He stands, simply stands there with his hands stuck to his sides and his easier than breathing smile nowhere to be seen, waiting for her to say something odd or quirky or weird or _anything_.

"Join me for lunch?" she asks instead, holding her hand out for him to take. He notices that her nails are babyish and chewed and sloppily painted red. He doesn't really hesitate, and within seconds, he's holding Angela's small hand in his own.

**-;**

Five years later, he finds that they have changed so much, too much, but he likes to think that deep down they're still the same people, those fourteen year old kids arguing in his trailer and in a field of yellowing grass about whether he was crazy or not.

They're nineteen, and her soft, delicate hands are shoving him against a tree, and out here is the only place where they can be alone, where they can be themselves, "Stop thinking," she tells him, and he thinks, always thinks, _we're not crazy_.

They're nineteen, and he's helping her throw whatever little belongings she has in an old duffel bag he stole from his father, presses a kiss into her hair, tells her he's going to meet her at the entrance in exactly an hour.

They're nineteen, and they're holding hands as they walk down an empty street, and the air is whipping her hair around her face, and he's smiling, wide and bright, finally matching her. She asks him, voice high with fear and excitement, "Where are we going to go?"

He shrugs and pulls her close, and her hair is all over his face, "I have no idea."

She laughs, pushes him away, laughs again. "Honest?" He grins, and she flicks his nose. "You're crazy, you know that? You're crazy."


End file.
